How often do superior alternatives fail to catch on?

I realize now that my first response only addresses how an individual might ideally decide whether to switch to Dvorak. Deciding which layout is “fitter” across the globe (or whichever language regions currently use QWERTY and can feasibly use Dvorak) is a much more difficult cost/benefit analysis in practice. To calculate cost, you would need to look at the costs of mass manufacturing new keyboards and/or patching and distributing the software that drives keyboard input. To calculate benefits, you would need to do large scale studies on the speed/productivity benefits of Dvorak over QWERTY, both for first-time learners and switchers. Heck, you’d even need to estimate the political costs (for governments, large corporations, standards bodies, etc.) of persuading the change, as well as the unavoidable costs of having both layouts exist in the wild during the transition period.

This is so daunting that it feels nearly impossible, and indeed, I suspect any rigorous cost/benefit analysis would show that the benefits of any new layout (even the technically best layout) is not worth the costs of switching away from any single ubiquitous standard (even the technically worst layout imaginable), at least not in any reasonable time frame.

My guess is that the best approach is to maintain one ubiquitous standard, and change it very gradually, and to gradually reduce the costs, e.g. by implementing easy layout-switching software in major operating systems, or even bolder approaches like supporting virtualization/containerization of personal software settings and development environments in major operating systems.

What if I could just sit down at any modern networked PC, type in a URL and some authentication, and immediately be running my own exact customized computing/development environment, complete with my keyboard layout, text editor, development dependencies, etc.? That would be awesome. As long as the hardware keyboard layout is roughly compatible with my software settings (and I don’t rely on printed labels on the physical keyboard), most of the costs of choosing a keyboard layout (other than the fixed costs of learning it) go away.

I've often wondered why alphabetical order isn't the default on phones. Given that most of the population that uses phones didn't learn to type.

It really bothers me actually.

Well put, as far as your point goes on positive aspects of multidimensional valuation. There is another aspect of these multiple dimensions that has little to do with positive product quality as most people perceive it, unfortunately. Capital (fiscal or social) spent on advertising, free samples, dumping, bribery of reviewers, lobbying about legislation, questionable lawsuits about patents and copyrights (e.g. SCO's zombie FUD lawsuit), hiring competitor's employees, establishing strategic partnerships, loss leaders, outright theft, and so on can distort outcomes so the lower quality products wins in the marketplace -- and thus the rich get richer.

I have seen that in the computing field. with, say, how Java won over Smalltalk (by engaging IBM's marketing muscle). Or how Windows won over CP/M and QNX (again, IBM's marketing muscles and more). Or how EFI won over Open Firmware (Intel's marketing muscle).

Such "successes" can then lead to establishing monopolies with social networking effects which become self sustaining -- even if the origins may be questionable: http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/9/13/lawsuit-threaten... "According to the complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, ConnectU LLC, formed by Divya K. Narendra ’04, Cameron S. H. Winklevoss ’04 and Tyler O. H. Winklevoss ’04, is seeking damages for Zuckerberg’s alleged theft of their idea — then called Harvard Connection — and his subsequent deception."

See also for Bill Gates' success based on other's source code: https://patch.com/california/losaltos/microsoft-co-founder-p... "That phase of Allen's life involved taking the bus–sports coat, tie, leather briefcase and all—down to the offices of local computer gurus. "I would boost Bill into dumpsters and we'd get these coffee-stained texts (of computer code)" from behind the offices, grinned Allen."

And: "MS-DOS paternity suit settled: Computer pioneer Kildall vindicated, from beyond the grave" http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/07/30/msdos_paternity_suit...

And it helps to start rich, of course: http://philip.greenspun.com/bg/ "William Henry Gates III made his best decision on October 28, 1955, the night he was born. He chose J.W. Maxwell as his great-grandfather. Maxwell founded Seattle's National City Bank in 1906. His son, James Willard Maxwell was also a banker and established a million-dollar trust fund for William (Bill) Henry Gates III. In some of the later lessons, you will be encouraged to take entrepreneurial risks. You may find it comforting to remember that at any time you can fall back on a trust fund worth many millions of 1998 dollars."

Contrast all that with the hypocritical: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists "As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people who worked on it get paid Is this fair? One thing you don't do by stealing software is get back at MITS for some problem you may have had. MITS doesn't make money selling software. The royalty paid to us, the manual, the tape and the overhead make it a break-even operation. One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written. Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put 3-man years into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product and distribute for free?"

So says the millionaire dumpster diver who could afford to write free software his whole life. Hypocritical to anyone who knows more of the story, but brilliant marketing! Including the rhetorical deception about how much time free software developers might have (including ones at universities or government labs or students like, then, Linus Torvalds).

The extension of copyright duration and scope by Disney and others uses the courts to suppress possibly better free alternatives to paid media. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Extension_Act http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/35811012/why-star-trek...

Even for cars, the purchase and destruction of light rail across the country by companies who stood to benefit from selling more cars was a factor (but not the only one) in the car's ascendance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_consp...

Leaded gas was known from the start to be harmful, yet money talked on that too including to misleadingly point the finger at lead paint instead of leaded gas for so much criminal behavior -- leading to a century of suffering and all sorts of external costs to society. http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2016/02/lead-exposure...

Further, the infrastructure for bicycling in the USA was never developed in a way like, say, the Netherlands -- and that is a political choice affecting the desirability of product use.

Marijuana and hemp (easily grown almost anywhere) in general became criminalized in part due to profits to be made by selling alternatives for tree-based paper and oil-based pharmaceuticals and remained criminalized because of campaign donations related to profits from maintaining prisons (e.g. why NY's clearly harmful Rockefeller drugs laws were supported for so long by so many legislators with prisons in their districts).

Most heart surgery like stents in most cases is basically a scam at $50K+ a pop compared to dietary changes (where nutritional advice and support offer little profit to hospitals and doctors): https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/02/health/heart-disease-sten... https://www.drfuhrman.com/learn/library/articles/53/for-stab...

The entire medical profession was distorted in many ways by this application of big money a century ago to disrupt a focus on lifestyle and nutrition and shift the focus to drugs prescriptions and procedures: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexner_Report

There are quite a few financially successful drugs and procedures which are based on questionable science and ethics -- but tremendously successful marketing operations.

The same goes for food.

The truth is increasingly coming out about refined sugar as poison: https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/11/409116/sugar-industry-supp... "If Project 259s findings had been disclosed, sucrose would likely have been scrutinized as a potential carcinogen, the authors said."

But rather than make such findings public, the Sugar industry paid money to shift the blame to fat: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/well/eat/how-the-sugar-in... "The sugar industry paid scientists in the 1960s to play down the link between sugar and heart disease and promote saturated fat as the culprit instead, newly released historical documents show. The internal sugar industry documents, recently discovered by a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, and published Monday in JAMA Internal Medicine, suggest that five decades of research into the role of nutrition and heart disease, including many of today’s dietary recommendations, may have been largely shaped by the sugar industry. “They were able to derail the discussion about sugar for decades,” said Stanton Glantz, a professor of medicine at U.C.S.F. and an author of the JAMA Internal Medicine paper."

Or in general: http://www.timescolonist.com/opinion/columnists/monique-keir... "One popular television journalist quipped that the four food groups should be renamed “the four lobby groups.”"

The food lobbyists (especially the dairy industry) were very good at getting propaganda into schools by supplying free "educational" literature.

The schooling industry itself also delivers a monopolistic product with many bad qualities: "The Underground History of American Education: A School Teacher's Intimate Investigation Into the Problem of Modern Schooling" https://archive.org/details/TheUndergroundHistoryOfAmericanE...

An even deeper question regarding foods, games, online, and other products and services is designing them to have an addictive nature as part of how companies get people hooked on stuff that is harmful for them. Examples: https://www.naturalnews.com/021949_tobacco_smoking_health.ht... https://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2012/11/27/165989232/... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/ethics-everyone/201202/... https://www.polygon.com/2014/7/28/5930685/love-child-intervi... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_Stimuli

Unregulated or misregulated businesses (including non-profits and government-run businesses) will privatize gains and socialize costs and risks whenever possible (including costs and risks to consumers and societies of using inferior products). So, while you are 100% right to look at multiple dimensions in saying why some products succeed, some of those dimensions can be pretty ugly.

Also because Microsoft licensed the OS to hundreds of PC clone manufacturers. Amiga was a closed proprietary system.

But also a fair amount less finger motion (I did test this to my own satisfaction some years ago) for a given set of text. And qualitatively, I do think that has translated into less wrist strain.

I’m not a particularly fast keyboardist, and I don’t particularly care about the speed differences of dvorak vs. qwerty. But, I do quite appreciate what I believe to be real ergonomic benefits.

My wife switched a few years ago and claims also improved wrist comfort.

But nobody would ever choose a dvorak keymap if they were solely interested in that 1-2% speed benefit (I don’t know where this number came from, but I no reason to doubt it).